The National Geographic Magazine
Walking home again to a Highland supper
of bacon and eggs, hot tea and cakes, however,
I had no eye for hardship and no ear for any
thing but the liquid note of the cuckoo. The
birds seemed all about me.
"Do they come each year like this?" I asked
a friend of the Sutherlands at dinner.
"Always. That's how we know that spring
is here."
"I suppose," said another guest, "that
Wordsworth had Skye in mind when he wrote
those lines. Remember them?
S. .the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Amongst the farthest Hebrides . . .
We talked of the birds a while, and then the
conversation veered around to the ceilidh
(pronounced "kaylee"), which is Gaelic for a
sort of social evening among neighbors. I was
to go to a ceilidh after supper, down at Broad
ford's Community Hall, and I wanted to know
what to expect.
"Oh, it will be grand," said a friend up from
Edinburgh.
"But not like the old ceilidhs,
the ones that used to be held, just as a matter
of course, in one cottage or another. The
neighbors would drift in to gather about the
hearth, you know, and the peat fire would be
smoking, and the stories and jokes and riddles
would go round, until everyone was gay and
sleepy and then gay again."
We went down anyway to the ceilidh. Per
haps it was not as it had been, but it was lively
beyond a doubt. For three hours, to the
thump and tootle of Broadford's ceilidh band,
MacLeods, MacKinnons, MacDonalds, and
Campbells danced and sang.
I stumbled back to the Sutherlands' by the
midnight sun. I raised my hand to knock,
and then remembered that neither locking nor
knocking are done in Skye. To friend or
stranger, Skye's doors are open, literally as
well as figuratively.
The MacDonalds Move South
From Broadford I sallied out to inspect
the region of Sleat, the Garden of Skye, as it
is called. Here, on the southern end of the
island, the grass is greener, the flowers more
profuse (page 111).
I could sympathize with the MacDonalds.
They had had a castle on the northern cape
of Skye-Duntulm-where, as Lords of the
Isles, they had lived for generations. On the
rocks below they had drawn up their galleys
by keel-fitting grooves cut in the stone, and
in the great house on the cliff's brink they had
feasted and fought, well into the 18th century.
But Duntulm faces the winds of the Arctic
Ocean. The MacDonalds moved south.
Near the new castle which they built on the
Sound of Sleat at Armadale is a village called
Ardavasar. It is typical of Skye that the
origins of the first town's name should be
Norse and of the second Celtic.
For the
Norsemen held Skye for many years, and it
was a Celtic warrior, Somerled, who captured
it from them. Both groups have left their
mark on Skye and its people.
According to one of several theories, the
name of Skye itself may be derived from the
Norse sky, meaning "cloud," and ey, meaning
"island."
Islanders speaking the name seem
to give the lightest flick of an accent to the
final "e"-so faint that it is hard to tell
whether one really hears it or not.
Lair of the Kelpies
Eloquent of Skye's past is Dunscaith Castle,
on the wild bay of Gauscavaig. Here came
the legendary Cuchullin of Ireland, to learn
the arts of war from its chatelaine, the doughty
Queen Scathach.
Dunscaith is in ruins now. We drove past
it by a body of water that seemed dark and
foreboding.
"That," said young Sutherland, "is Loch
nan Dubhrachan, 'Lake of Darkness.'
Of
all the haunted lochs of Skye, I think this was
the most feared."
"Just because of its color?"
"No," he said.
"Because a kelpie used to
come out of the water and drown passers-by."
"And it doesn't any more?"
"I believe the statistics show a marked
decline in kelpie casualties! "
Downhill from this lair of the wicked water
horse lay the little settlement of Isleornsay.
"The Norse," said Sutherland, "called it
Ebbtide Island."
It wasn't hard to see why-at low water a
causeway joins it to the mainland. Against
the green countryside, its white-walled light
house stood out sharply, a reassuring sight, I
suppose, for craft navigating the tricky tide
waters of the sound.
Next day the Sutherlands showed me more
sea and mountains. A special concession it
was, too, for this was the Sabbath and not
lightly broken or even bent in the Highlands.
Other Skyemen were trudging off to church at
the sound of the parish bell. Dual services
awaited them, one in English at 11 and an
other in Gaelic an hour later.
Boswell's "Morning After"
In the name of hospitality, however, I was
taken for an outing by car to Loch Slapin.
On the way we saw the MacKinnons' an
cient farmstead, Coire chat achan, or "Caldron
of the Wild Cats."
In ruins now, the farm
gave welcome in 1773 to a pair of distinguished
travelers, Dr. Samuel Johnson and his Bos
well. The doctor, it appears, got a decent